A Gala Event

by Sheila Connolly

  “I guess,” Seth said. Aaron just nodded. “I’ll drive,” Seth added.

  It took them all of five minutes to reach the Historical Society on the green. The lights were on inside, their golden glow spilling out into the night, and Meg could understand why Aaron would have been drawn to the building, even if he hadn’t had an agenda. After Seth parked and they climbed out of the car, Meg sneaked a glance at Aaron’s face. He looked somber—and frightened? He had spent years pinning his hopes on this one meeting, and Meg hoped he wouldn’t be too upset if it didn’t produce the results he hoped for.

  Gail opened the door before they reached the granite stoop. “Please, come in.” Aaron hung back, as if unsure of his welcome, and Gail added, “You, too, Aaron. We’re even now, right?”

  “Thank you, Gail.” Aaron followed the others into the building.

  After she’d shut the door, Gail turned to face them. “I set things up in the basement. Ooh, that’s an ugly name for a great space. Seth, help me out here—what should I call it?”

  “The archive? The library?”

  “‘Library’ will do, I guess. Or maybe we should have a naming contest among our members. Anyway, there’s a nice large table there, and the light is good. And it’s warm, as promised. Follow me.”

  Dutifully they trooped through a door at the rear and down some new stairs to the lower level. Meg inhaled: the place still smelled of fresh paint, now combined with the musty smell of old paper. As Gail had told them, there was a table about eight feet long, which currently had two chairs on each side. A dozen or so bankers’ boxes occupied one end of the table. “You found all of them?” Aaron asked.

  “All that I know about. You think something is missing?”

  “No, no,” he hurried to reassure her. “Look, you can tell those three on one end are different—not the same kind of boxes. Those have got to be the last ones Gramma sent over. Have you looked in them, Gail?”

  “No, Aaron, I thought you should have the first look. You want to start with those three?”

  “Okay. Uh, they’re still taped shut.”

  “Let me get some scissors,” Gail said. While she ran upstairs, nobody spoke. Meg noticed that the three nonmatching boxes were the only ones that were taped shut. Why?

  Gail was back in thirty seconds, and handed the scissors to Aaron. “You can do the honors.”

  Aaron stood up and pulled one of the boxes closer to him, then ran one blade of the scissors around the lid, cutting the tape. Meg found she was holding her breath. What would emerge? Dust? A large rat? A million dollars in bearer bonds? Aaron wiggled the lid off, then stood staring at the contents. “I don’t understand,” he said to no one in particular.

  “What’s in there, Aaron?” Meg asked.

  He glanced at Gail, who nodded her encouragement, and then he reached in and pulled out what looked like a bundle of financial ledgers. Not antique, not even close. Aaron extracted three ledgers, followed by a stack of manila folders. “I don’t know what these are.”

  He reached for the second box and opened that. This time he pulled out a bundle of green-and-white-striped paper, which Meg recognized as outdated computer paper. The third box contained more folders, and Meg spied what she thought read “Insurance” on at least one of them.

  When Aaron had opened all of them, and sorted through the piles—with surprising patience—he sat down and shook his head.

  “Not what you expected, Aaron?” Gail asked.

  “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. These look like business records.”

  “For what business?” Meg asked.

  Aaron pulled one of the ledgers toward him. “Eastman Investments.”

  “Your father’s company?”

  “No, or at least I don’t think so. He worked for a big Wall Street firm, in their Boston office. He traveled a lot on business. Why would my grandmother even have these? And why did she think they were important?”

  “What’re the dates on them?” Seth asked.

  Aaron leafed through a couple of volumes. “Late 1980s, up to the first part of 1990. So they were pretty much current when Gramma handed them to me.”

  “Do you think your grandmother was, well, of sound mind when she gave these to you?” Meg asked.

  “I always thought so.”

  “Well, if she was, then she must have had a good reason to think these were worth saving,” Meg said. “And worth getting out of the house, out of harm’s way.”

  “May I suggest something?” Gail asked suddenly. When everyone nodded silently, she said, “Why don’t we set those aside for now and see what’s in the other boxes? If it’s more of the same, that will tell us something. If it’s not, then something else. Agreed?”

  “That makes sense,” Seth said. “Let’s put the stuff back in the first boxes first, so we don’t get things mixed up.”

  The transfers were accomplished quickly, and they did a cursory check of the other boxes. All turned out to contain historic papers relating to the Eastman family, collateral families, and Granford history. When they had finished the first pass, Gail said, “Under normal circumstances, I would be thrilled to see this collection, and I promise we’ll take good care of it. But it doesn’t begin to explain the contents of those other boxes. What the heck is going on? Or should I say, was going on twenty-five years ago?”

  “I wish I knew,” Aaron said. “That was my father’s stuff. There’s no reason for Gramma to have it, much less hide it. You all agree that she didn’t want it found, at least right then?”

  “Seems likely,” Seth said. “Tell me, what was your grandmother like? Educated? Did she have a job at any point?”

  “Sure, until she couldn’t work anymore. She was smart and observant. It made her really mad that she couldn’t do what she had been able to; she kept cursing her body for giving out on her.” A brief smile passed over Aaron’s face. “And she got really bored when she had to stop working. She told me she’d read every book she wanted to, and even reread her favorites. She hated television. I guess that’s why she was happy to let me spend time with her—at least I was entertainment.”

  Meg was listening with only half an ear, trying to figure out what the odd cache of documents could mean. She didn’t like the results she was coming up with. “Aaron, forgive me if I sound tactless, but did either of your parents inherit money?”

  “Gramma had enough to get by on. Dad didn’t come from a rich family. Maybe the house was worth a lot. Why?”

  Meg ignored his question. “You said he worked for a big Wall Street firm—as I remember it from business school, things started to get kind of rocky in the financial world right around then, in the eighties. Did that affect your family’s lifestyle, as far as you can remember?”

  “Meg, I was so out of it then, they could have brought home a pet elephant and I wouldn’t have noticed. As far as I remember, there were no big changes. They bought new cars every year or two, and they were nice cars, if you know what I mean. They took vacations to fancy places. My brother and sister were still in expensive boarding schools. But I’ll admit I could have missed a lot.”

  “Let me ask you one more thing, Aaron: did your grandmother like your father?”

  Aaron stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “To quote Gramma, my father was a pompous ass. He was condescending to her, and she hated having to depend on him for anything—although she had money of her own and contributed to the family budget. As far as I know, she paid him for her room and food, like she was a boarder. And Mom didn’t complain; she took his side. So no, Gramma didn’t much like dear old Dad. Why are you asking?”

  Meg chose her words carefully. “The only reason I can see for your grandmother to collect these documents and hide them off the property is because there was something fishy about them. You said your father did something in finance, right?” Aaron nod
ded. “But these look to me like documents from a private investment scheme. Which could have been perfectly legal, and he might have suffered some reverses in his primary job and needed some additional income. Or it could have been, well, something less than legal. Your father might have been running some sort of scam or Ponzi scheme. You probably missed the whole Bernie Madoff scandal, which was a very large and successful fraud, so it’s been known to happen. Let’s say that your grandmother knew or guessed that something was not right, so she hid the documents from him—kind of her ace in the hole, if he got too difficult. Maybe she wanted to protect your mother. Does that make sense to you? Anybody?”

  “How does that connect with the fire?” Seth asked.

  “I don’t know . . . yet. If he’d been found out, would your father have committed suicide, Aaron? And taken his wife and his mother-in-law and possibly you with him?”

  Aaron shook his head. “Nah. Dad thought he was invincible—and smarter than everybody else. He probably would’ve found a way to get out as much money as possible and then settled on a Caribbean island somewhere.”

  “Then we need to take a close look at these documents. I can do some of it—I used to be a financial analyst—but I didn’t specialize in corporate accounting.”

  “Mom can help,” Seth said. “She knows bookkeeping. Although she probably doesn’t see this many zeroes very often.”

  “Then we can work together for a first pass. Aaron, this may be nothing, so don’t get too excited.”

  “That’s okay, Meg—I know you’re trying. But I think you’re right. As far as I know, Gramma had all her marbles right up to the end, so if she took these and had me help her hide them, then she had a reason.”

  Meg wasn’t sure whether she wanted to find something or not.

  16

  They left the boxes at the Historical Society and headed for home. Meg and Seth dropped Aaron off at the Gardner property, then proceeded to Meg’s house. Aaron hadn’t said a word along the way, beyond “Thanks.”

  At Meg’s house there were lights on in the kitchen and in Bree’s room. Seth turned off the engine and they sat in the relative darkness. “Well,” Meg said, and stopped, unsure of what she wanted to say.

  “I agree,” Seth said. “That was . . . interesting. Not what any of us expected. But what the heck do we do with the information?”

  Meg shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe the grandmother was falling into dementia, no matter how much Aaron protests, and she collected random stacks of paper and believed they were important and squirreled them away. Aaron wasn’t in any shape to judge. Or maybe she was bang on and she was somehow trying to protect her daughter from her sleazy husband. If he was sleazy. We don’t know that yet, and won’t until we see what those ledgers mean. What I still don’t see is how any of this connects with the fire.”

  “Well, suicide is still on the table, if dear old Dad was a swindler and couldn’t stand the shame of being revealed. Or it could be murder, planned or accidental. Maybe the fire was meant as a warning, but it got out of hand.”

  “Seth, do we have to go there? Why can’t it simply be a single tragic event, unrelated to anything else?” Meg asked.

  “It may yet be. I’m afraid we aren’t giving Aaron much closure. Although you’ll notice he was right, that there was something odd going on, and his grandmother seemed to know it. Too bad she didn’t leave a file explaining what she thought she knew.”

  “Nothing from Art yet?” Meg asked.

  “Not that I know about. Of course, he may have a few other things to do in his job, apart from tracking down dead files for us.”

  “I know that; you don’t have to be sarcastic. Seth, what do you think of Aaron, now that you’ve spent some time with him?”

  Seth considered. “I think he was a smart kid who got into trouble, but lots of kids do that and survive. I think he got sandbagged by the fire and the deaths, so he never had the chance to come out the other side and become an adult. He seems to be intelligent; maybe he could have made something of himself, given the chance.”

  “But if he didn’t start the fire, someone took that chance away from him. That’s almost criminal itself, that he should have been deprived of a rewarding, meaningful life, however he would have chosen to define that.”

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  “So what do we do now?” Meg demanded.

  “For the moment, we get some sleep. Tomorrow or whenever, you and Mom go through the financial records. I’ll check in with Art about the rest of the documents. And we hope that something jumps out at us.”

  “I hate to bring this up, but do you think there’s any risk involved, to anyone? I mean, if—still an ‘if’—Aaron didn’t do it, the person who did is still out there and has believed he got away with it for twenty-five years. What would he do now? Go after Aaron? Or us, who seem to be snooping around?”

  “Why do you assume it’s a ‘he’?”

  “Okay, he or she. It wouldn’t take much strength to start a fire. It would take some planning, which of course women excel at.”

  “Of course,” Seth said with a smile. “As for what you really asked, I don’t know. It’s possible. On the other hand, if this person has felt safe for this long, he—or she—probably doesn’t think there’s any threat now. And there may not be: most of the players are long gone, and who knows where Kenneth Eastman’s original records are, if they survived at all? Or maybe there’s a statute of limitations on fraud and it’s all moot. Who’s going to remember enough to change the script now?”

  “Will you tell me when you think we’ve invested enough energy in this, so we can stop?” Meg unbuckled her seat belt and turned to face Seth. “Do you think I’m doing this just as a pretense, so I don’t have to think about the wedding?”

  It was hard to read his expression in the dark. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “I don’t think so. But I seem to be obsessing about the wrong things. Or maybe after such a crazy busy season, with not enough pickers, I don’t know how to slow down, so I’m creating my own tempests in teapots.”

  “I don’t think so, Meg. Aaron deserves a fair chance, and I’m not sure he got one. But we don’t have to make it a crusade. We need to strike a balance.”

  “Agreed. Can we go in now? I’m getting cold.”

  * * *

  The next morning Art called while they were still eating breakfast. Seth answered, but what Meg could hear of his conversation was not very helpful. “Uh-huh. Yeah. When? All right. What do we need to do?” When he finally hung up, he sat down at the table again and resumed eating.

  Meg swatted his arm. “What did he say?”

  “He’s got the police report in hand, but it’s pitifully thin. He can get hold of the court proceedings, which weren’t included, but not before this afternoon. The state fire marshal’s report is included in both.”

  “Did he read the report?” Meg asked.

  “If he did, he didn’t comment on it. I’d tread lightly here, Meg. I won’t say he was close to Chief Burchard, but he is loyal to him—they’re both cops. So don’t go charging in and telling the world that Burchard handled it wrong.”

  “But what if he was covering something up? Even if it was only that he was incompetent or sloppy, but he realized he might have messed up?”

  “You’re going to have to prove it to Art. And also keep in mind that forensics have changed in the past twenty-five years. There are a lot more tests they would run today that they simply didn’t have back then. Burchard had to make a judgment call, based on what he had to work with at the time.”

  “I get it, Seth. I’m not clueless. So when can we look at the files?”

  “You are an impatient woman—except when it comes to weddings, I guess. He said he’d drop off what he found after work today. Maybe he’ll have the court documents by then, or at least a computer l
ink we can use.”

  “Great. Are you going to talk to your mother about reviewing Kenneth Eastman’s documents, or should I?”

  “Why don’t you? I don’t know what her schedule is like these days, so you two can work something out between you. You have any idea what you’re looking for?”

  “Something that smells wrong. No, don’t laugh, Seth. Of course, what I’d really like is an official prospectus for whatever dear old Dad was flogging. If it’s a publicly held fund, it should be available, or at least archived somewhere. If it’s not, our only hope would be to find someone who invested with him, assuming they received all the paperwork and kept it. And if we find a copy, then we compare it with the documents from the boxes. It would be nice to have his own bank records, but I think that’s too much to hope for. Anyway, if there’s more money coming in than is going out to the shareholders, there may be a problem. Ditto if there’s no money and he’s making payouts from the new investments.”

  “I see what you’re trying to do, but what’s the point? Even if Dad was cooking the books, he hadn’t been found out, as far as we know.”

  “But he could have been teetering on the brink, which is what pushed him to act,” Meg protested.

  “Maybe. But he still ended up dead, so he didn’t benefit in the long run. You could check out his will, to see how he handled his estate, but I don’t know if there would be a final tabulation. And if he’d run through all the money he’d taken in, or he kept it in some secret account, his death would have ended things.”

  “Interesting point, though. I wonder what it would take to get a look at the state of his bank accounts when he died. Did he leave everything to his wife, who was also dead? Or to his children, simply divided among them? Could Aaron legally inherit, since he was convicted of killing them? Assuming, of course, there was any money at all.”

  “Meg, I don’t have answers to any of these questions. You’ll have to do your own digging. Have you thought about tiles?”